


Baby It's Cold Outside

by IntrepidEscapist



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, I wrote this awhile ago, Other, fluffy stuff i guess, hisoka used to be a good boy now hes a dirty FUCK, near death experiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9295808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntrepidEscapist/pseuds/IntrepidEscapist
Summary: A small in between moment from Hisoka's chapter inLife Has Torn You Apart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this months ago and people seem to like Mar so I'm probs gonna write a full length thing where Hisoka and Mar meet each other in the future. Validate me with comments so I can decide if I wanna post or not.

Winter in Bubei was picturesque.  It snowed almost every day, and at night the city lights bounced off the snow and gave everything a yellow, almost ethereal glow.  It was a lovely sight to behold if you were inside and wrapped in a warm blanket.  

Mar lived in a cold, metal dumpster.

She had a few blankets.  Most were almost threadbare and weren’t actually used to cover her body in favor of lining the frozen bottom of her dumpster.  If she had money to spare she’d buy some, but one blanket was often the same price as a month's worth of food.  It wasn’t worth it.  A sympathetic adult who gave her five jenny when they passed her doing jumping jacks to ward off the cold said maybe Santa would bring her something warm.

That was last year and Mar not only realized Santa wasn’t real, but it was obviously her mother who left presents under the tree back when she was at home.  It probably would’ve been a more disappointing discovery if she wasn’t so focused on keeping her body temperature stable.  She’d almost frozen to death five, maybe six, times in that dumpster.  The more time she spent outside of the glorified ice box and moving around, the warmer she’d be.  Unfortunately all that running around made her tired, and if she was tired she had no choice to sleep in the cold dumpster.  It was better than sleeping in the snowy street, but it was also about as safe as sleeping in a freezer.

Somehow Hisoka got a hold of sweaters.

Mar had been jogging when she passed him by.  Well she didn’t actually notice him since she was too focused on her exercise, he flagged her down.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked.

His roots were coming in through the dyed pink of his hair.  It was too cold to be pouring water over his head to rinse the bleach out.  He’d be a pink popsicle. The sweater he had on was too big for him and bright fluorescent pink.  “Hot Stuff” was knitted into it in bold red letters along with a huge lipstick mark.  It looked ridiculous, but it looked warm.  Mar kept herself from reaching out to touch it.

“Not right now,” Mar jogged in place while she spoke. “I’m running.”

Hisoka looked her up and down slowly, that smirk he’d been wearing lately plastered on his face.  She was wearing what she always wore, pants and a sports bra.  He lingered on her stomach and she glared at him.  He raised his hands in surrender.

“I just thought you would wear something warmer,” his eyes flicked down to her stomach then back to her eyes. “It’s snowing you know.”

“I’m barefoot too.  The cold doesn’t bother me.”

The cold bothered her very much.  She hated the cold.  But if he was going to stand there and gloat about having a warm, stupid looking sweater then she wasn’t going to stick around.

Hisoka stuck his arms out, “How about a warm hug?”

Mar rolled her eyes and decided she would just keep running.  She looked over her shoulder and snorted at the pout on his face.

She didn’t have time to humor Hisoka in the wintertime, even if she did like him.  Almost all of her efforts were spent keeping herself in motion.  He came by again when she was doing jumping jacks outside her dumpster.  This time he had a matching hat with a big yellow pom pom on top.  Where was he getting these clothes?  He couldn’t have been buying them.

Hisoka looked at her expectantly for a moment, probably waiting for her to say hello.  Mar was too busy for that.

“What are you doing?” he finally asked.

“Jumping jacks,” she said.

“I can see that,” his eyes followed her jumping up and down comically. “Why?”

“It’s cold.”

“I thought you said the cold didn’t bother you.”

Mar glared at him but didn’t stop moving.  She couldn’t feel her feet anymore, but she only had six dollars leftover from buying food.  Shoes were way more than that and no one gave street kids discounts.  She debated fighting some kid with shoes and stealing them, but she had no way of knowing if they would even be the right size.

“It doesn’t if I exercise.  Where are you getting those clothes?”

All he was missing were pants.  He still had the same ratty brown shorts he usually wore.

“My friends next door gave them to me,” he said, beaming. “They said I was too cute and sweet to be cold.”

“They must be confusing you with someone else.”

Hisoka’s face went from gloating to sour in two seconds flat.  Mar smiled a little.

“I was going to ask for a fight, but you’re being so mean to me.  I even had a prize.”

“I’m not fighting you right now.  I have more important things to do,” Mar said.

Hisoka looked hurt for a second, just a second, but he scoffed and turned his nose up fast enough that Mar could’ve imagined seeing that.  Fighting would warm her up, but she’d be too tired after to maintain any sort of warmth.  Then she’d freeze.

“Fine,” Hisoka huffed.  “I’ve been nothing but nice to you and this is how you treat me.”

He was so dramatic sometimes.  At least he was cute.  

“I’m busy, Hisoka.”

He actually shot a glare at her that time.  He turned on his heel and left, but Mar could see him from two blocks down the street because of how bright his outfit was.  She felt a little bad for blowing him off, but she didn’t want to freeze to death so, priorities.

She kept jumping for a long while after the sun went down, when the city was bathed in the reflective orange glow from the street lights bouncing off the snow.  When she was ready to pass out she crawled back into the dumpster, into the old blankets that keep her skin away from the frigid metal.

It was better than sleeping in the street.

***

Hisoka’s box looked like something someone would put out for a stray cat.  It was lined with blankets, old sheets, even old sweatshirts he tore up and laid lengthwise over the top.  He’d found a few planks of wood and put them under the box to keep the bottom dry and away from the snow.  The inside was jammed with soft blankets he stole either from stores or from other kids.  So long as he kept the flaps of the box closed with Bungee Gum it was always nice and warm in there.

The sweaters from the sex workers were always a plus.  He hated seeming weak and helpless, but the workers were eager to hand him clothes.  One of them apparently always knit to the point of excess every winter and they didn’t know what to do with all the extra.  Throwing the stuff out would be wasteful and Hisoka looked like he needed a sweater.  

That’s what they told him anyway.

By this point he had a hat, a scarf, a sweater, some gloves, and some socks that went way past his knees.  Sometimes other kids would laugh at him but they stopped when he beat them to a shivering pulp.  He always liked to mention that he would be warm at night, unlike them, just to rub salt in the wound.  They really weren’t in any position to be calling him names when they would be the ones freezing to death.

Mar was ignoring him though.

Normally she’d be at the arena, or walking around the town.  Sometimes she’d be beating up makeshift dummies in one of the empty lots.  Ever since it started snowing he saw her less and less.  She only showed up to fight at the arena maybe once a week, and when she did it she never fought him.  When she was around she was always running or jumping, never in one place long enough to say hello.

He thought she looked cold.  She never said outright that she was freezing but Hisoka was smart.  Sometimes he would follow her around when she jogged through the city. 

Whenever she stopped she would shiver and rub at her arms to try and smooth the goosebumps down.  He got an extra sweater for her from the brothel next door.  He wanted to fight her for it but she was never still long enough for him to ask, and on the off chance he was able to she said she didn’t have time for him.

That was ridiculous.  It’s not like she had any hobbies.  She was a street urchin, they weren’t known for their hobbies.  Except for Hisoka of course, he was a magician in training.  
It was particularly cold today.  Hisoka was lingering outside his alley to see if Mar would pass by.  He was going to jump her this time, force her into a fight and then whether he won or lost (he’d never beaten her but he was sure he would this time around) she would get the sweater.  He felt cold just looking at her bare stomach in the single digit weather.

The clouds were darkly overcast, small snowflakes coming down in a thick sheet over the city.  Hisoka thought maybe it was too cold for Mar to run, but the cold never stopped her before.  He remembered, after twenty minutes of idling on the sidewalk that sometimes she would just do jumping jacks by her dumpster, so he collected the sweater and walked in the direction of the dumpster.

She would be so grateful for this sweater, he thought.  Maybe he would get a kiss out of it.  The thought made his ears heat up.

Hisoka noticed that most of the stores were closed and the realization that it was Christmas popped up in the back of his mind when he saw couples walking up and down the street.  Mar would probably like the sweater better if he called it a Christmas present instead of a consolation prize.

Mar wasn’t doing jumping jacks in front of her dumpster when he got there, so he figured she must’ve been inside.  Maybe it was too cold for her.

“Maaaar,” he knocked on the side of the dumpster, the sound echoing. “It’s your favorite person.”

No response.

Hisoka didn’t like being ignored.  There was the possibility that she was actually out running and he missed her, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.  He really had a reason to fight her if she was just ignoring him.  He tied the sweater he brought her around his waist (it was purple and said “Hot Mama”) and climbed up the side of the dumpster, lifted the top, then slid inside.  

A flashlight illuminated the inside and Hisoka burned with anger when he saw Mar was in fact ignoring him.  He was about to take a cheap shot when he realized something seemed...off.

“Mar?” he said.

Surely she’d be mad at him trespassing.  She liked her space.

She was curled up in the corner of the dumpster in a nest of thin blankets.  She could’ve been asleep, but the light from the flashlight let Hisoka noticed a tinge of blue had settled on her lips.  His stomach dropped.  

He scrambled to her side and slapped her cheeks.  They were ice cold. 

“Mar, get up!”

Her face scrunched up a little bit and she opened her eyes, blinking slowly like he woke her up from a nap.

“Wasn’t sleeping,” she grumbled.  “Didn’t have to hit me.”

Even as she said that her eyes were starting to droop again.  

Hisoka had seen enough kids freezing to death in the streets this time of year to know what was happening.  He sat her up and she didn’t resist, almost flopping around like a puppet. Her fingers were a little blue too.  She blinked again and looked at him, confused.

“Hisoka?  What’re...when did you get here?” she asked.

Even though her skin was cold she wasn’t shivering.  That made him panic a little.  When the kids he didn’t care about froze they stopped shivering, then they fell asleep and didn’t wake up. She’d been falling asleep when he got there.  His chest seized up when he thought about what would’ve happened if he’d gotten there a bit later. Hisoka pulled the sweater from around his waist and pulled it over Mar’s head.  She managed to put her arms through it, but her movements were slow and clumsy.

“...Warm,” she muttered.

Her eyes still drooped and Hisoka wasn’t reassured.

The sweater he got was much too big for her, so it was easy for him to pull up the bottom and pop his head out of the collar, next to hers.  Despite the fact that he was small and wiry, he was fairly warm.  Mar immediately latched onto him, her fingers digging into the fabric of his sweater.

“It’s cold,” she said after a minute.  “I’m freezing.”

Hisoka was already warm, but her jamming her face into the crook of his neck made him blush furiously.  Mar managed to pull her legs into the body of the sweater so she was almost sitting in his lap.  She was like a moth drawn to light.  Her nose was frigid against Hisoka’s neck, but he didn’t mind.  Her steady breathing meant she wasn’t going to die.

“I was going to fight you for that sweater,” Hisoka said, trying to keep his voice steady.

Mar started to shiver.

“Too bad.  It’s mine now.”

Hisoka didn’t argue with her.  He just let her stay curled against him, sapping his body heat.


End file.
